A Slight Change of Plan (3 page)

“What about, well, you know. Sex?”

She made a face. “I’m never having sex again. Seriously. Robby and I had sex once a month for the first few years of our marriage, and when we stopped altogether, I was perfectly happy. Sex was never one of my big things, you know that. Frankly, at this point of my life I’ve pretty much forgotten all about it. That’s what’s so good about this online thing. We never really have to touch.”

I was trying to absorb this. “Cheryl, what if one of them wants to touch?”

She looked at me with shaking head and clucking tongue. “That’s why I’m keeping them on the phone instead of in person. Besides, they’re all pretty old. They probably can’t get it up.”

“But—” I stopped. I knew by now to never judge the rest of the world by anything Cheryl had to say. She’d been living on her own private planet for years, and liked it that way. If I wanted to find out about online dating, I’d have to look elsewhere.

To change the subject, I mentioned her grandson. She had one. I did not. I tried not to hold it against her, but it was hard. I had three healthy children, all well into their
childbearing years, and none of them had thought to procreate. Jeff is gay, but that was not an obstacle anymore, and I know he had mentioned adoption sometime last year. I had been trying very hard not to pump him for information. Regan was getting married any day, but she had this whole “I need to start my career” thing going on. True, she had spent many years and many dollars going to veterinary school, but you can heal sick puppies at any age, and you’re only fertile for so long. As for Sam, well, I wasn’t sure Sam had even had sex.

“How’s Tyler?” I asked.

She beamed. “I spent all morning with him yesterday. I taught him how to say ‘chair’ and ‘taupe.’ ”

“Interesting choice of words. Are you training him to be an interior designer?”

“Very funny. So, I guess since you’re selling the house and thinking about dating, you’re going through a midlife thing?”

I sighed. “Why do people say that? Midlife? Seriously, I’m fifty-five. How many one-hundred-and-ten-year-old people do you know?”

“Honey, if everyone had a midlife crisis at thirty-five, the world would implode. So, are you going to be having sex?”

I sighed again. “This menopause thing is killing me. Just when I think my libido has taken a permanent vacation, it comes roaring back, and suddenly I miss sex. God, an orgasm is one of life’s few pleasures that isn’t harmful or illegal.”

Cheryl arched an eyebrow. “Don’t need a man for one of those,” she said.

“I know. But I’m tired of naming my vibrators so I have someone to thank.”

After lunch, she wanted to drive out to Castle Crossings to see my new place, but I had to explain to her—several times—that the old owner was still living there and we couldn’t just walk in and poke around.

She sighed. “Just as well, I suppose. I have a bra fitting at two thirty.”

I stared. First at her face, then at her rather amazing boobs. “Bra fitting?”

“Yes, Kate. I’ve been having bras made for years.”

“Made? As in, custom built?” Adam had often joked that Cheryl’s bras needed not so much to be sewn as engineered.

“Yes.” She sounded impatient. “I know that you don’t need to wear one. I can’t tell you how much I envy you that. But when you’re built like me, well, let’s just say that with great breasts comes great responsibility.”

And on that note, she left.

I talked to my daughter, Regan, on the phone three times a week. Her idea, not mine. And we usually lunched together at least one day during the week. I went over to her apartment for dinner on the occasional Sunday, and once a month I tried to have a big Saturday-night spaghetti thing, with Regan and her fiancé, Phil; Jeff and Gabe; and whatever friends and/or relations I could gather together. So I knew for a fact that everyone was aware that I had put the house on the market. I mean, didn’t they see the big yellow sign in the front yard? And I talked to Sam about it, because he specifically told me not to get rid of the shoe box that was on the top shelf of his closet, behind his old chemistry textbooks. Of course, after he asked me this, I quickly ran upstairs to see what was so damn important, but the thing
was taped with enough duct tape to seal up a submarine, so I let it go.

And when a very nice day trader and his wife made an offer, and I took it (even though it was a bit less than the asking price), I believe I put the whole thing on Facebook. In fact, I may have even posted a picture of me waving the check in the air and grinning like an idiot. I know that I told everybody when I got a closing date for the new place, because I sent everyone an e-mail asking if they could help me move.

But, somehow, my children remained oblivious.

I didn’t know that, of course. I thought the lines of communication were open and flowing. After all, they had plenty to say about me dating again.

Dating in the digital age was very different from dating in the seventies. For one thing, most of the flirtation was done in front of my computer in my jammies and slippers. I considered that a plus, by the way. I had always hated getting all dressed up, ironing my hair straight, and worrying about falling off my platform shoes just to meet some jerk I would never, ever see again.

The picture face on the screen had no expectations. He didn’t buy you a drink or two, for instance, then get upset because you wouldn’t blow him in the unisex bathroom. He wouldn’t take you out to dinner because he needed a date for his cousin’s wedding, and he thought you’d look hot in a red minidress and could show up his brother with the pregnant wife. No one asked if I was holding. No one mentioned his waterbed. And no one would ever expect you to wait a few weeks to see whether he was getting back with his
old girlfriend or not. No, the face on the screen was very low-maintenance.

At first, I got a lot of “waves.” That’s online dating–speak for a show of interest. Two gentlemen waved all the way from Florida. Like a long-distance relationship at my age was a good idea. I didn’t wave back. I exchanged two or three messages with a very sophisticated New Yorker, until he mentioned that he still had a wife, and how did I feel about open marriage? He was a little
too
sophisticated for me.

Then there was the week of Daves. DaveOne was a banker who had been out of a job since 2009 but still got dressed every day and commuted to New York City, where he’d sneak into museums or stake out his old office building. Why is it that people online tell a stranger things they should seriously never mention to anyone? Ever.

DaveTwo seemed sweet and funny. We actually got as far as suggesting to meet in person for coffee. Then he asked if he could bring his mother, because she’d gotten used to him living back home and got lonely if he went out without her.

Oh my.

DaveThree seemed rich with promise. A lawyer. Widowed. Three kids. I was thinking we had so much in common. But he started sending things to my e-mail address, you know, those rants about politics and such, and although I’m not all
that
liberal, when he confessed that he rewatched Ronald Reagan’s old State of the Union addresses I had to draw a line.

My children found this all very entertaining. Sam actually laughed, and he’s not big on spontaneous expressions
of delight. Jeff suggested I start a blog, and went ahead and bought the domain name ohbabybaby.com. He promised to give it to me for Mother’s Day. Ha-ha, sweetie.

Regan got very analytical. She brought a file to lunch filled with articles about dating after “a certain age” and all the pitfalls involved. I read part of her offering with a mixture of amusement and horror, then promised her I would never give a stranger any of my bank account numbers. She seemed unconvinced.

I was kind of glad the dating thing remained low-key, because I had so much other stuff to do. Although I’m not actually a pack rat, as Laura suggested, I do have a hard time letting go of certain things. But I got very hard-core. I went through four closets of old clothes and gave away anything I hadn’t worn in two years. Or anything that still had shoulder pads. Or was tie-dyed. I did keep my business suits. All of them. They represented not only my career, but a serious financial investment, so I decided they would stay.

I had to get rid of records. I had LPs dating back to the sixties—did you know that Sally Field released an album as the Flying Nun? Some of these were harder to get rid of than others, but, as Jeff pointed out, I had already downloaded everything of importance into my little MP3 player. Since I could now listen to every Dan Fogelberg song ever recorded without having to get up and flip anything over, out went the vinyl. Books were also a bit of a problem. So I just got rid of all of Adam’s and kept mine.

I fretted over furniture until I decided to just buy new. I don’t care what kind of shape the living room couch is in—every twenty years, whether you need to or not, you should buy a new one. I sent an e-mail to my kids asking
them if there was anything they wanted me to save. Nobody got back to me, which I thought was a little strange. Were they ignoring my e-mails? Or were they just in denial about my moving?

I had to drive up to Boston for Sam’s graduation a week before the closing was scheduled, and planned on major shopping on Cape Cod. I would have liked someone to come with me, but both Jeff and Regan were vague. I should have realized something was up, but I was too busy, so I resigned myself to going solo.

At the end of April, three weeks before Sam’s graduation, I spent a few hours online making a list of all the places on Cape Cod I wanted to visit. Virtual shopping isn’t as emotionally satisfying as real shopping, but it is cheaper. I also found a few painters and a guy to redo the floors of the condo. All without putting on real shoes. God, I love the Internet. Then, because I hadn’t been there in a few weeks, I opened up my profile on the dating site. Three more waves. A retired teacher. A career military guy. And Jake Windom.

Boy, was God laughing now.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

R
emember your first true love?

Not the high school first love, because, really, that was all about angst. Where is he? Will he call? Why was he talking to Jenny? When should I let him take off my bra? Does he really love me? Should we have sex? When? Where? How can I go away on vacation with my family for two weeks and leave him alone when that bitch Cathy just broke up with her boyfriend and has her eye on him?

And I don’t mean your first sex boyfriend, either. For some smart people, high school boyfriend and first sex boyfriend were one and the same. But for a few late bloomers—like me—first sex boyfriend was in college, and (let’s get real) sex was pretty much the only thing holding you together. Ever remember having a conversation with that guy that lasted longer than five minutes? And that wasn’t about where you were going to be taking your clothes off next?

No, I mean your first Real True Love. The one you talked to for hours. The one you knitted a sweater for. The one you dreamed of going to Colorado with, where the two of you would build a cabin together and live off the land.

Maybe those of you who did not have that first love in the seventies had different dreams. I must admit, the
building-a-cabin thing is pretty lame these days. But you know the guy I’m talking about.

He was the one.

You never, ever loved another man the way you loved him.

And when it was over, he broke your heart like it would never be broken again.

For me, that was Jake Windom.

He was tall, dark, and handsome. Hey, some men really are. I met him the first week of my sophomore year in college, when he hit me in the head with a football. Not on purpose—it was fate. I was walking across an intermural field with my roommate, barely paying attention to the guys tossing around a football on the other end of the field, when I heard someone yell, “Watch out!” As I looked to see who was yelling, a football hit me right on the top of my head. It hurt. Not a lot, but enough to bring tears to my eyes, mostly from surprise, but I didn’t tell that to the incredibly gorgeous guy who ran up and apologized, and then insisted he walk me to the student center for a drink of something. That was Jake. We had coffee, then went to the pub for a beer, and then we had another beer or six, and then we sat on the steps in front of my dorm until dawn, and when I finally stumbled back into my room, I was in love. So was he.

I never got used to the idea that someone as handsome as Jake could want somebody as normal-looking as me. He was a year older than me, a business major. We were inseparable from then on. We both lied to our parents about staying on for the summer sessions, got a studio apartment together, and worked crummy jobs for money to pay the rent. My mother thought I had gotten the apartment with
MaryJo, the girl who’d been my roommate at the dorm. Luckily for me, Bloomfield College was far enough away from home that Mom would never just drop by.

When Jake got accepted to a master’s program at Penn State, I told him I’d follow him up there and finish my degree later. He said no. I wanted to graduate and go on to law school. If I dropped out to follow him, he said, I might not get back on track. Besides, he said, we loved each other enough that a little distance couldn’t hurt us. I knew that other women would go after him. He was so handsome—how could they not? But, stupid me, I believed him. He graduated in May. He went away in August. I was lonely and miserable and could not afford to take the bus to see him, and by November he’d started seeing somebody else. A teaching assistant, a few years older than he, who understood all the pressure he was under. It was nothing I had done, he told me. It just happened.

I spent three days crying and eating nothing but frozen Sara Lee pound cake. MaryJo almost called my mother to come and take me home, but I rallied, because I decided the best revenge was to get into a great law school, find a terrific job, and make the cover of both
Time
and
People
magazines as the wealthiest, most beautiful woman in the world that he didn’t have anymore.